Love and Deepspace developer Papergames has announced the cancellation of Valko, the previously teased sixth male lead and love interest for the popular otome action RPG. Following the character’s official announcement on June 22, complaints from parts of the playerbase prompted the devs to cancel Valko’s development and forgo adding any new male leads to the game going forward. The decision has been quite divisive, as many fans had been looking forward to the new character and even organizing their gacha finances in preparation for his release.
Valko’s announcement was met with resistance from some fans for several reasons. Some believed that his inclusion would push the focus of future content toward him over the game’s existing love interests (some of which have been experiencing a drought in story content as of late). Chinese fans, in particular, criticized Valko for everything from his appearance to supposed allusions to human experimentation in World War 2 (some of Valko’s lore drops were theorized to reference an infamous Imperial Japanese Army unit and war criminal, which Papergames has denied). The character’s act of breaking into the female protagonist’s home also came under scrutiny, as some saw it as “trivializing women’s safety for entertainment.” A few days after the announcement, the game’s social media platforms lost a good number of followers.
It seems the backlash experienced by the developers was severe enough for them to not only cancel Valko – whose content had surely been in development for a while by the time he was announced – but also to announce there will be no new male leads coming to the Love and Deepspace, which is quite drastic for a live-service game.
While the company has promised several in-game items as recompense, Valko fans who were eagerly awaiting his release are upset about the cancellation (there is even a petition to have him be added to Love and Deepspace). Given that much of the negative backlash surrounding the character seems to come from the Chinese fanbase, others suggest he be added exclusively to the global servers, though it’s questionable whether this is a realistic option for the developers.
